Just Harmless Fun? Understanding the Impact of Pornography

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Just Harmless Fun?

Understanding the Impact of Pornography

All healthy men, ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, know there is acertain fury in sex that we cannot afford to inflame, and that a certain mysteryand awe must ever surround it if we are to remain sane.G.K. Chesterton

More and more we are asked to believe that pornography is merely harmless .adultentertainment.. Polls show that most people don.t buy that line, but where do you findthe evidence (rather than just rhetoric) to demonstrate its impact? To answer thatquestion, Enough Is Enough has prepared this Special Report to provide an up-to-dateoverview of the evidence of harm. We survey recent empirical research, mediastudies, experience of clinical psychologists and other compelling information, and werespond to many of the porn advocates sound-bites.Read the evidence and decide for yourself: is pornography .just harmless fun.?

Should we be concerned about the increasing intrusion of pornography into our society?Interestingly, most people say .yes,. according to surveys giving as much as 75%1 or even 94%2approval to pornography restrictions on the Internet.3 This report will review the evidence thatthese concerns are eminently justified.The advocates of pornography usually attribute such concerns to mere prudishness. Sex,however, is hardly just another appetite, like hunger for food. Our sexual appetites are a bit morecomplex than eating too much pizza, and the consequences of poor sexual decisions usually can.tbe fixed with two Alka-Seltzers.

Surveying the EvidenceA favorite tactic of pornography.s advocates is to argue that it is .harmless fun,. mere .adultentertainment.. They would have us believe that any difference between Venus De Milo andDebbie Does Dallas is simply personal taste, not discernment. They like to challenge the publicto prove that pornography causes harm.Well, there is proof of harm. The best-kept secret about pornography is that it causes realharm to real people.Every Boy Scout knows that you can define any point on a map with two compass bearingsfrom different perspectives: just draw the two cross-bearing lines on the map, and look wherethey intersect. In the case of pornography there are cross-bearings from many perspectives . allintersecting at the point of harm. Each perspective is persuasive in its own right. Takentogether, the evidence of harm is difficult to ignore.

Advertising

It has been said that the most disingenuous argument in the pornography debate is that porndoesn.t influence people. If images don.t influence attitudes and behavior, how do we explainthe existence of the advertising industry?Of course, none of us likes to admit we are influenced by advertising. Few proud car ownerswould say: .I bought my Volvo because their advertisements create an image of a thinkingperson.s car, and that appeals to my ego.. We value our self-image as rational beings and, as aresult, most of us are in denial about the influence of advertising.Those in the advertising business, however, know that images have impact.

In 1997,America.s top ten advertisers alone spent a total of $5.2 billion helping consumers part with theirhard-earned cash.5 It might be nice to think that investments like Nike.s Michael Jordancampaign are made out of blind hope, but market research predicts and confirms the impact ofadvertising. .The enormous advertising and marketing industries are built on the premise thatthe media do influence a wide range of behaviors.. 6To believe pornography does not impact attitudes and behavior is to believe we are notaffected by what we see. Our collective state of denial of the impact of advertising illustratesthat people can believe they are not affected. But the evidence illustrates how improbable thatwould be!To argue that advertising has no impact (as opposed to merely being blind to it) requiresimpressive faith that we invariably intercept and rationally defuse the power of suggestion inadvertising images. Oftentimes we do. But communications experts note that advertising worksprecisely because it appeals to human emotion rather than to rational considerations:.TV commercials do not use propositions to persuade; they use visual images.andonly rarely.verifiable assertions. Therefore, commercials are not susceptible to logicalanalysis [and] are not refutable.It is not facts that are offered to the consumers but idols,to which both adults and children can attach themselves with equal devotion and withoutthe burden of logic or verification..7If the effectiveness of advertising is based upon its appeal to emotion, do we really believethat pornography appeals to reason? Pornography, ultimately, is a form of advertising. (Can youspell .sex sells.?) Pornography advertises a particular view of human sexuality, as surely as theMarlboro Man conveys a particular image of a cigarette brand. The only question is: what brandof sexuality is pornography promoting?

The messages of pornography

The Hugh Hefners of the world sometimes describe their product as simply .the joys ofconsensual sexuality.. The reality is much less elevated and considerably more one-sided.Studies indicate that individuals use pornography to inform and teach themselves about sexualbehavior. So what does pornography teach?About sexuality:

Scholars note that human sexuality in pornography is never more than physical, sincedepictions of other basic aspects of human sexuality.such as communication betweensexual partners, expressions of affection or emotion (except fear and lust).and concernsabout .the consequences of sexual activities.are minimized.Pornography advertises sex without relationships, without commitment, and especially,without consequences. How many porn videos include the resulting teenage pregnancy with thechild-mother dropping out of school? Or catching human papilloma virus (HPV), leading toinfertility or cervical cancer, or even catching AIDS?

About women

In the words of one academic study: .The characteristic portrayal of women inpornography [is] as socially nondiscriminating, as hysterically euphoric in response to justabout any sexual or pseudosexual stimulation, and as eager to accommodate seemingly anyand every sexual request..10 Another study notes that women are depicted as .malleable,obsessed with sex, and willing to engage in any sexual act with any sexual partner..11Pornography presents women in stereotype, as insatiable sex machines to accommodateevery possible sexual request. Women, it tells us, are here to please men, and if they say .no. itis just token resistance. In pornography, the typical woman is always ready, available, and eagerto please, unlike a real woman who might have inconvenient expectations of her own.

About Men:

In pornography, men are apparently here to have sex with as many women as possible.Marriage is either a hindrance to their purpose, or irrelevant because fidelity is abnormal andpossibly unnatural. In pornography, men certainly don.t value women for their minds, since theydon.t appear to have discovered that women have such a thing.

False advertising?

In our society, .the learning of sexual techniques and attitudes is too often left to chance,which may include such sources as X-rated video shops. As a result, a great number of peopleacquire faulty information and expectations that can impair their sexual enjoyment andadequacy..12 The message of pornography is that sex is the only human activity where there isno such thing as a poor choice, and where there are no consequences to actions.Pornography.s portrayal of human sexual behavior is so erroneous as to be fraudulent. Mostobvious are the unrealistic body types, unrealistic sexual situations, and routinely multi-orgasmicsexual performances. More subtly, the most desirable sexual behaviors are depicted as excludingmonogamy, fidelity, responsibility, commitment, or even an established relationship of any sortbetween partners.This stands in direct contrast to the most rewarding and satisfying sexual relationships in reallife. In the most definitive scientific survey ever done on human sexual behavior, the vastmajority of both males and females were found to have few sex partners over a lifetime. Oncemarried, the vast majority have no other sex partner than their spouse. Americans generallyshow considerably more sexual restraint than the entertainment media (including pornography)would suggest, but it is the couples who are married or cohabiting who have more frequent andmore satisfying sex.

There is a vivid contrast between pornography.s portrayal of desirable sexual behaviors, andthe behaviors found most satisfying by most individuals. Because people often judge themselvesby how they perceive that others behave, individuals using pornography set themselves up forunrealistic expectations leading to damaged relationships._____________________________________________________________________________________________

Impact of Sexually Oriented Businesses

The curiously toxic nature of pornography is also illustrated by the consistently negativeimpact that sex businesses have upon the areas in which they are located. This impact ofsexually oriented businesses (SOBs) has been clearly demonstrated through land use studies.U.S. courts allow restrictive zoning of SOBs because such businesses have significant negative impacton their surrounding communities.

Empirical Research Studies

In her book Defending Pornography, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) PresidentNadine Strossen quotes with approval a writer.s observation that: .Pornography tells me.thatnone of my thoughts are bad, that anything goes [emphasis in original]..17The message that anything goes is certainly inherent in pornography. Unfortunately,pornography makes short work of any distinction between sexual liberation (in the sense of amature awareness and understanding of one.s sexuality) and sexual exploitation.The characteristic message of pornography is that women are sluts (or, in the more measuredterminology of scholarly analysis of content, .promiscuous sexual creatures who [are]subordinate and subservient to men.. Empirical research sets out to test the obvious question:do users absorb the message that pornography is selling?

A useful way to overview the empirical research is to divide it into two chronologicalperiods: the work reviewed by two government commissions, and the research that has takenplace subsequently.The Government Commissions

The then-available evidence as to the influence of pornography was assessed by two majorCommissions established in 1970 and 1986, respectively. In 1970, the Presidential Commissionon Obscenity and Pornography concluded that there was insufficient evidence that exposure toexplicit sexual materials played a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminalbehavior. In 1986, the Attorney General.s Commission on Pornography reached the oppositeconclusion, advising that available pornography was in varying degrees harmful. In effect,however, the two Commissions were answering different questions.Between 1970 and 1986 the nature of the available material changed substantially. In 1970,full frontal nudity was rarely found in newstand magazines, since it could be successfullyprosecuted as obscenity. One scholar noted that .in 1970, many of the experimental studiesutilized sexually explicit materials from sex research institutes . . . because of the difficulty ofobtaining materials from the local market.. Needless to say, by 1986 this was no longer aresearch constraint! By 1986, gynecological close-ups were available in newsstand magazinesand hard-core material (.penetration clearly visible.) was not difficult to find in adult videostores.

This complete change in the pornography .scene. contributed to the change in findingsbetween 1970 and 1986. Also, in 1970 only a limited amount of research had been carried out,much of it originated by the Commission itself, in comparison to the extensive studies completedsince then. The 1970 Commission was criticized for failing to adequately address the impact ofviolent pornography and, as a result, much of the research over the next sixteen years went intothis area.By 1986, there was .some convergent validation.20 of the effects of violent pornography,including findings that sexually violent depictions led to:♦ Aggression against women under laboratory test conditions.♦ Significant increases by college males in the acceptance of rape myths and ofsexual violence towards women.♦ Seeing the rape victim as more responsible for the assault, with perpetratorsabsolved and viewed less negatively.♦ More aggressive sexual fantasies.

Even certain scholars who attributed such results primarily to the violence component notedthat .a nonrapist population will evidence increased sexual arousal to media-presented imagesof rape . when the female victim shows signs of pleasure and arousal, the theme mostcommonly presented in aggressive pornography.

The Surgeon General.s Workshop on Pornography and Public Health met from June 22-24,1986, and, like the 1986 Attorney General.s Commission, concluded that .pornography doesstimulate attitudes and behavior that lead to gravely negative consequences for individuals andfor society..

Straw Men

It is customary for pornography advocates to counter such findings by overstating them. Forexample: .It is ridiculous to suggest that one look at Playboy turns a man into a rapist.. Ofcourse that would be ridiculous: it.s also not what the research is suggesting. Or: .Pornographycan.t compel anyone to act in a particular way.. True, and neither did liquor or tobaccoadvertisements (now banned or restricted) compel anyone to buy their products. Or:.Pornography doesn.t affect everyone the same way.. True, and neither did tobacco or liquorads . but their influence was undeniable.

What the research does show is that pornography is a strong, negative influence affectingattitudes and behavior. It promotes the same attitudes towards women that breed sexualharassment and destroy relationships. It promotes the same attitudes towards sexuality that breedpromiscuity and the spread of STDs. It teaches that the main function of .a sensitive, keyrelationship of human existence. is simply self-gratification at the expense of others. And it issold without even a .Surgeon-General.s Warning.

Experience of clinical psychologists

The May 15, 1999 cover story of the highly-regarded business magazine Fortune was a featurearticle, .Addicted to Sex . Corporate America.s Dirty Secret,. discussing the destructive effectsof pornography, promiscuity and prostitution in the business world. It is ironic that, while thepornographers make intellectual arguments that their product is harmless, businesses in the realworld are dealing with its consequences.

The sub-head for the Fortune article was: .Companies used to wink at these troubled executives,now they send them to desert clinics for .The Cure… One such clinic is run by Dr. Patrick J. Carnes,a leading expert on sexual addictions, who commented in the article that: .Most of my patients areCEOs or doctors or attorneys or priests. We have corporate America.s leadership marching throughhere..Fortune, of course, has no advocacy position on either side of the pornography debate and itsinterest was simply to report a growing problem for business. For years, however, some clinicalpsychologists have expressed concern about pornography because of the evidence of their patients.experiences. In a previous study by Dr. Carnes, for example, 90% of the men and 77% of the women(out of 932 sex addicts) indicated that pornography played a significant role in their addiction.Other clinical psychologists who have published their work include:

♦ Dr. Gary Brooks, who describes five principal symptoms of a .pervasive disorder. linked toconsumption of even soft-core pornography like Playboy:

• Voyeurism – An obsession with visual stimulation trivializing all other maturefeatures of a healthy psychological relationship.• Objectification – An attitude where women are rated by size, shape and harmonyof body parts.• Validation . Where men who never come close to sex with their dream womanfeel cheated or unmanly.• Trophyism . Where women become the property of the man as a symbol ofaccomplishment and worthiness.• Fear of true intimacy . A preoccupation with sexuality, handicaping the capacityfor emotional or non-sexual intimacy.

♦ Dr. Victor Cline of the University of Utah, who identifies four stages of viewing pornographyfollowing the initial exposure:

• Addiction – The desire and need to keep coming back for pornographic images.• Escalation – The need for more explicit, rougher, and more deviant images forthe same sexual effect.• Desensitization – Material once viewed as shocking or taboo is seen asacceptable or commonplace.• Acting out – The tendency to perform the behaviors viewed, includingexhibitionism, sadistic/masochistic sex, rape, or sex with minor children.

Although not all men are equally vulnerable to habitual porn use, Dr. Cline concluded thatfor some men pornography .is the gateway drug to sexual addiction..

Dr. William Marshall and Dr. Gene Abel have published important research with child molesters,rapists and other sexual offenders.49 Abel.s research indicated that more than 50% of sex offendersused pornography, and that offenders who used it were less able to control their behavior than thosewho did not. Abel.s findings contradicted the .safety-valve. or .catharsis. theory (which hasbasically died from lack of supporting evidence in the last twenty years). Marshall found that, in astudy of outpatient sex offenders treated over a six-year period, one-third reported they had usedpornography immediately before at least one of their crimes.

The body.s biological responses are one reason pornography.s effects are so powerful.Research reveals biochemical and neurological responses in individuals who are emotionallyaroused, regardless of the stimuli. The adrenal hormone epinephrine is released, lockingmemories into the brain, and explaining why men can remember pornographic images seen yearsbefore50. Chemicals called opioids, released by nerve endings in response to pleasure, thenreinforce the body.s desire to repeat the process.

In other words, chemical responses to sexual arousal and gratification cause the body todesire to repeat a rewarding behavior.which may be the use of pornography. Thus thebiological drive to return to rewarding behavior can lead to an actual dependence or addiction.In addition, the release of epinephrine and opioids in the body are associated with both thetriggering sexual image and the message it conveys. Thus the biological response topornography rewards and hence reinforces the messages presented – which, as discussed earlier,often include anti-social attitudes about women, relationships, and behavior. Simply stated, interms of pure body chemistry, sex sells!

Anecdotal Evidence

In addition to the experience of psychologists and therapists, the harms of pornography areattested to by those who have experienced them directly . users and spouses of users. In thewords of Enough Is Enough President Emeritus Dee Jepsen: .Some say pornography doesn.thave any victims. I know better. I look into the tear-filled eyes of victims nearly every time Ispeak about the Enough Is Enough campaign..

This sort of qualitative evidence does not generate the neat, clinical percentages ofexperiments under controlled circumstances. But the wife whose marriage has been destroyedby her spouse.s pornography addiction has little interest in whether the latest research studiesconfirm that pornography might have harmful effects. To the men and women whose lives havebeen damaged by pornography, this is not an academic issue.

In the 1986 Final Report of the Attorney General.s Commission on Pornography,testimony after testimony demonstrated pornography.s damage to individuals and families.Women spoke of husbands who insisted they imitate scenes from pornography, whether theywished to or not. Doctors spoke of sexual dysfunction and unrealistic expectations due topornography. Law enforcement officials spoke of pornography.s connection to sexual crimes.And men spoke of the damage they had witnessed, or caused, because of pornography use.Other anecdotal evidence includes the worst-case scenarios of mass-murderers like Ted Bundy,John Wayne Gacy, Gary Bishop and others where pornography played a role in their crimes.Obviously, millions of men use pornography without ever going to these extremes. But while .noone supposes that every addict of such material will act out his fantasies, it is willfully blind to thinkthat none will.

Factors Particularly Affecting Children

Although no evidence will ever sway some porn advocates to concede its potential for harmin the lives of adults, one might expect less dispute in the case of children. After all, childrenusually have less maturity and discernment. How can children deal wisely with hard-coresexuality that is (usually and hopefully) beyond their experience of life? If a neighbor exposedyour child to hard-core pornography, wouldn.t you regard that as sexual abuse?Unfortunately, even the protection of children from pornography is now challenged in somecircles because, the argument runs, the harm to children has never been .proved.. This is arecurring topic, for example, in the Internet discussion groups of the self-styled .intellectualfreedom. arm of the American Library Association (ALA). Similarly, in 1999, two NorthAmerican court decisions were based in part on the idea that pornography.s harm to children hasnot been .proved..

By the same logic, one might argue that the harm of crack cocaine to children is alsounproven, since in neither case is experimental research conducted on children. In both cases theomission is a simple matter of ethics . what kind of researcher exposes a child to putativelyharmful matter, to see if harm does, in fact, result?

The Ethical Principles of the American Psychological Association (APA) state that .thefundamental requirements are the participants have made a fully informed and competentdecision to participate and that they emerge from their research experiment unharmed.or, atleast, that the risks are minimal, understood by the participants, and accepted as reasonable.[emphasis added].56 Clearly, no child can give such informed consent, which is why no ethicalresearcher would conduct experimental studies on pornography and children. In short, studiesincluding children do not exist because they would violate professional and ethicalguidelines.This does not mean there is no evidence of harm to children. Firstly, all the considerationsalready discussed with respect to adults apply at least equally to children. Secondly, there areother considerations that particularly impact children:

Cognitive development

Although children mature at different rates, there are four or five stages of cognitivedevelopment which are fairly standard in their occurrence.57 The child starts as the center of hisor her universe and advances through concrete thought and abstract thought to eventually becapable of relationships. Every teacher knows that algebra is not taught in elementary school,for example, because the child hasn.t yet developed sufficient faculty for abstract thought.It is a maxim of parenting that you don.t give children more information than they are readyto handle. For example, when a child asks .where do I come from?. the wise parent knows thatsometimes the right answer may simply be .Pittsburgh.. Premature exposure to hard-coresexuality is a bit more complex than premature exposure to algebra . particularly if the imagesthemselves are misleading (see .False Advertising?. above). One therapist writes:.When a child experiences reality beyond their readiness, they have no means ofprocessing the material intellectually or emotionally. At that time, they will bury theexperience in their unconscious, where it will lurk in the shadows haunting them,possibly for the rest of their lives..

Conclusion

Can the harms of pornography be proved with the certainty of a proposition in geometry?No, because that is not the standard applied to research in the social sciences. The correctstandard is to assess the preponderance of the evidence.

In the case of pornography, the preponderance of the evidence clearly demonstrates that thematerial is not .just harmless fun.. Although almost all men are attracted by it, there are clearlyperils associated with its use . which no doubt explains why so many men are willing to resisttheir own hormones and try to keep away from pornography.

Pornography is not about real human sexuality: it.s about a dehumanized, synthetic versionof sex that eliminates love, honor, dignity, true intimacy and commitment. The image ofsexuality offered by pornography comes without relationships, responsibility or consequences.a largely fraudulent picture. Porn movies never show a girlfriend getting pregnant at 16, or ayoung man getting AIDS . or a married man resisting the temptation of another woman.Unfortunately, the research demonstrates that pornography.s fraudulent messages areingested, affecting attitudes and behavior. Countless studies show that the basic messages ofpornography . that a woman.s function is to satisfy a man sexually, that women have no value,no meaning, and their desires and needs are irrelevant . breed sexual callousness and acceptanceof the rape myth (i.e. that women secretly desire to be raped).These are the attitudes that lead to sexual harassment, failed relationships, early promiscuityand the spread of STDs. And, unless one believes that attitudes and behaviors are unrelated, it isdifficult then to be surprised by the evidence of correlation between pornography usage andsexually abusive behaviors.

We protect ourselves and our communities, in part, through the values we affirm asimportant. Treating every human being with respect, equality, and dignity, are values we shouldall be able to embrace, as a society and as individuals. The harms of pornography result fromreplacing respect, equality and dignity with a candy-coated message of hate.